Thankful For Heaven

The meaning of this passage is clear: Christ has gone before us to prepare an abiding place for us in heaven.

And what a place it is going to be! Just the beauty of it by itself is beyond imagination. I recently read of a man who visited a distinguished artist at his studio. He found the artist there with an open Bible in front of him turned to Revelation 21:19-20 while at the same time he was arranging squares of colored glass. "I have made a singular discovery," he said, "these are the precious stones in the foundation of the New Jerusalem, and when placed in the order described in the vision they form a perfect harmony of color. Were a convention of artists called to produce a perfect color-scheme, they could not improve upon it."

God loves beauty or He wouldn’t have put so much of it in this world. Who painted the butterfly’s wing with all those gorgeous hues? Who thought up sunrises and sunsets? Who put the blue in the bluebird? Who taught the raindrop to take a ray of light from the sun and pencil it on the sky in one huge arch of bewildering elegance? Who made maple trees that look like they are on fire in the Fall? Who made all the brilliant colors found in fish, some fish so deep man does not even see them, but God stuck them down there anyway.

Earth contains some incredibly beautiful places. I’ve said before that 1 of the things I would do if I was rich would be to simply travel and see the beautiful places of this world.

I read about a man who visited the Grand Canyon for the first time and when he saw it he immediately cried because he was so overwhelmed by its beauty and awesomeness.

Who pictured all this in His mind and brought it into being? God did it all!

A little girl was taking an evening walk with her father. As she looked up amazed at the beauty of the stars she exclaimed; "Oh, Daddy, if the wrong side of heaven is so beautiful, what must the right side be like!"

Question: we live in a world under the curse of sin, do you think the colors and beauty of Heaven will be less or more intense than what is on earth?

Heaven is a prepared placed. If God could create such beauty here, just think what heaven will be like!

One the big problems people have when it comes to thinking about Heaven is they think it will be boring. It is going to be some endless church service and they have a hard enough time sitting through a 1 hour service now or they think they will be floating around on the clouds playing a harp 24/7.

A Far Side cartoon captures these misconceptions. A man with angel wings and a halo sits on a cloud, doing nothing, with no one nearby. He has the expression of someone marooned on a desert island, with absolutely nothing to do. A caption shows his inner thoughts: "Wish I’d brought a magazine."

Listen, if you are tempted to think Heaven will be boring then that must flow out of 2 assumptions:

1) the first is that God is boring. Correct? If Heaven is boring it would have to be because God is boring. That is utter nonsense. Our desire for pleasure and the experience of joy come directly from God’s hand. He made our taste buds, adrenaline, sex drives, and the nerve endings that convey pleasure to our brains. Likewise, our imaginations and our capacity for joy and exhilaration where made by the very God we accuse of being boring. Are we so arrogant as to imagine that human beings came up with the idea of having fun, of enjoyment?